Wednesday, September 19, 2012

items

1. At Rosh Hashanah services, the rabbi gave an impassioned sermon on the need for communitarianism. People who wonder why most Jews are Democrats should have come hear this.

2. Attended the reading by Roz Kaveney (clever and allusive), Malinda Lo (thrilling) and Cindy Pon (atmospheric) at a tiny screening room in the back of the ground floor of an office building in downtown SF. Now I have to consider buying books.

3. Listening to an obscure overture by Rossini (there's more of them than you think) with a section that I'm sure comes verbatim in some other overture, but I can't remember which one. [Ed.: found it!]

4. Reading paper submissions for Tolkien Studies is reminding me of accounts of slushpiles at sf magazines. Chip Delany once recounted an academic who, when asked why he didn't mention Bester's The Demolished Man in his paper where it would have been relevant, asked "Is this something I should have heard of?" I just encountered a similarly yawning gap of knowledge by a purported Tolkien scholar, and my brain hurts.